Research and Training Centers

In today’s high-tech world, scientific and technological research is more vital than ever before. Scholars and researchers throughout the Institute of Technology and the University are conducting basic and applied research that will improve our lives, protect the environment, promote advances in other academic disciplines, and explore worlds that are limited only by the imagination.

Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA)
The NSF Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications (IMA) works to close the gap between mathematical theory and its applications. The IMA identifies problems and areas of mathematical research needed in other sciences and encourages the participation of mathematicians in solving these problems. The institute sponsors an annual program devoted to a specific topic, workshops, and industrial problems seminars.

Institute of Technology Center for Educational Programs (ITCEP)
ITCEP develops and administers educational programs for K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students in the area of mathematics, science, and engineering. ITCEP’s K-12 programs, which are offered during the academic year and the summer, are designed to keep young students interested in mathematics, science, and engineering, and to help them gain a sense of participation in scientific culture and its impact on their lives.

Laboratory for Computational Science and Engineering (LCSE)
The Laboratory of Computational Science and Engineering (LCSE) provides a facility in which innovative hardware and system software solutions to problems in computational science and engineering can be tested and applied. The LCSE is built around strong and long-standing collaborations between Laboratory researchers and the computer industry. It also has a mandate for outreach to industries that now use or would like to use high performance computing to expand their capabilities. Although the Laboratory builds new combinations of computing elements and experiments with new computing paradigms, the LCSE combines these functions with applications of the new technologies, and thus provides significant high performance computing resources to its users. The LCSE has a broad mandate to develop innovative high performance computing technologies and capabilities in computational science and engineering.

Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC)
The NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) supports research in microstructured polymers, artificial tissues, magnetic heterostructures, and porous materials. The center has strong links to corporate entities through a broad-based industrial partners program. MRSEC resources include a state-of-the-art materials characterization facility. MRSEC research programs are integrated with a significant education and outreach effort involving four-year and tribal college faculty and students.

Medical Devices Center
The Medical Devices Center aims to strengthen interdisciplinary research among faculty in the health sciences and engineering specifically related to medical devices. The center will help train the next generation of medical device inventors and foster new relationships with the successful Twin Cities medical device industry and various government agencies in an effort to improve health care worldwide.

St. Anthony Falls Lab
The St. Anthony Falls Laboratory is a teaching and research facility of the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota. Our goal is to advance the knowledge and understanding of environmental hydraulics, turbulence, earthscape evolution, and climate/ ecosystem dynamics via high quality experimental, theoretical and computational research. As a group, we are committed to transferring that knowledge to the engineering community and to the public through applied research and outreach activities.

Theoretical Physics Institute (TPI)
The William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute (TPI) is a major international center for research in theoretical physics. Its seven members are major contributors to elementary particle, astro-particle, and condensed matter physics; the research areas that are the foci of the Institute’s research. These research activities are supported by funds from the Institute’s endowment as well as from grants obtained from federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Information Technology (CBI)
The Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) is an archives and research center dedicated to promoting the study of the history of computing and its impact on society. CBI provides fellowship support, preserves relevant documentation, and conducts original historical inquiry. CBI resources include an online collection of oral histories-more than 300 interviews with people who are knowledgeable about the history of computers, software, and networking.

The Minnesota Geological Survey
The Minnesota Geological Survey is a unit of the Newton Horace Winchell School of Earth Sciences in the University of Minnesota. The Survey is the University outreach center for the science and technology of earth resources in Minnesota. The Survey conducts basic and applied earth science research, conveys that information to the public through publications and service activities, and promotes earth science education. Minnesota is its exclusive focus.

History of Science and Technology (HST)
The History of Science and Technology is a dynamic interdisciplinary field of scholarship that studies the development of science and technology in their broader cultural context. The field is growing rapidly as people realize that science and technology are themselves among the most important cultural phenomena of the modern age. The Program in the History of Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota ranks among the country’s best. It offers both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, with comprehensive opportunities for advanced research and study in history of the physical sciences, the biological sciences, and technology. Within these areas, students are encouraged to make use of the perspectives and methods of intellectual, institutional, social, economic, and cultural history.

Army High Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC)
The Army High Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC) conducts computational science research in areas of defense technology that are important to the Army and the Department of Defense. The center promotes research collaborations between its seven partner institutions and the Army. AHPCRC also supports educational programs designed to encourage students to pursue careers in high performance computing.

The Minnesota Nano Center (MNC)
The Minnesota Nano Center (MNC) is an interdisciplinary facility that supports faculty and industrial research within the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota, to support education, research and industrial collaboration in microelectronics and other related research involving nanofabrication.